


and then there were five

by lugubrious



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Multi, Recreational Drug Use, no one is happy and ben is dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2019-12-30 19:10:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18321458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lugubrious/pseuds/lugubrious
Summary: how do the siblings cope with ben's death? badly.





	and then there were five

**Author's Note:**

> this is short and rough

When Ben dies, Luther finally gets it. Like, all of it. What their dad has been talking about their whole lives - saving the _world_ . They were going to be _superheroes_.  
Scratch that, they already were.  
Or Ben was at least. They weren’t like other children, obviously, but he’d never really understood that either. Did these powers really mean he wasn’t allowed to go to high school with the other kids, make friends outside the family, do all those things that normal children do? Of course they did. He and his siblings were special - they’d been handed a responsibility, a _burden_ that they had to be trained to handle. That was their sacrifice. That was their purpose.  
And it was almost a relief, standing over Ben’s coffin as it was lowered into the wet earth, because now he knows - now that he _understands_ it all. He knows that this really is meant to be, and they are supposed to spend the rest of their lives fighting for, _giving_ their _lives_ for the earth.  
This is what it means, all of it, and Luther is relieved to understand it, finally, because then Ben’s death isn't for nothing.  
He didn’t lose his brother for nothing.  


+

  
When Ben dies, Diego finally gets it. Gets that it’s bullshit. Everything. Every fucking thing the old dick ever fed to them, all that crap about saving the world - being heroes - it was all fucking bullshit.  
He should have figured it out sooner. When Five disappeared, had been missing for a week and Reginald Hargreeves had sniffed at the empty seat, and said nothing. Had a portrait painted the next day with five instead of six, blotted their brother from existence.  
They sit for another painting on the morning of the funeral, and Diego vows it’s the last time he’ll put on this old man’s uniform. He keeps the mask, though, tucked into his back pocket.  
Maybe if he’d figured it out back then, he could have gotten them out. He could have saved Ben from an old man’s bullshit, the lies that would eventually lead to his death.  
He waits a week, and a week after the funeral, he shoulders his knapsack, pushes the door open, and gets the fuck out of there. Mask in his back pocket.  


+

  
When Ben dies, Allison tries to bring him back.  
She stands alone in the funeral parlour, hours before the service is scheduled to begin.  
‘I heard a rumour,’ she begins, wipes away her tears. ‘I heard a rumour -‘ voice is stronger now, ‘that you were still alive.’  
Ben’s body is cold to touch. He’s in his uniform, which feels... wrong. There’s no one there - she pulls the mask away from his closed eyes and grips it. Twists it in her hands.  
‘I heard a rumour-‘  
‘I heard a rumour-‘  
‘I heard a rumour-‘  
Ben stays cold.  


+

  
When Ben dies, Klaus tries to die with him, a little bit. Not on purpose, he just gets so fucked off his brain he sees a young girl with braids on a bike who calls herself God and wakes up in a hospital bed a week later. High on morphine, his arm in a cast, broken ribs, a black eye, and hazes of memory.  
He missed the funeral, he finds out, when he was lying in the hospital bed next to a window. He sneaks out after two days because they begin to wean him off the morphine and he doesn’t plan on being sober anytime in the foreseeable future. Thinks fondly of the times over the past week that are sweet, quiet gaps in his memory.  
Klaus is a simple person, really. Just after a bit of quiet.  
When he gets back to the academy he’s making solid headway through a bottle of vodka, and Diego is waiting for him.  
‘I just w-wanna talk to him,’ Diego says as soon as Klaus slouches down the hallway. Diego’s leaning on his door frame. He’s got a bag slung over one shoulder.  
‘Going somewhere, are we?’  
‘Klaus. Please.’  
‘No can do, mein bruder,’ Klaus says, then giggles. Diego’s face is dark, his eyes points of bright liquid in his face.  
‘Klaus.’ His voice rises slightly. ‘I gotta - I gotta tell him something. Is he there?’  
Klaus waggles the bottle of vodka in his face, tuts loudly. ‘You know it doesn’t work like that.’  
‘You can’t j-just-‘ his fingers clench by his side.  
‘Diego,’ Klaus says, as kindly as possible, ‘even if the big man himself came down and promised I’d see ol’ Benny if i sobered up, I’d have to pass on that. You may not understand but-‘ he presses a hand to his chest, frowns, ‘conversing with ones dead sibling is traumatising stuff.’  
Diego leaves without a goodbye, Klaus watches him go. Swigs some more of the vodka. And, from behind him,  
‘Hi,’ Ben says.  


+

  
When the others die, Ben’s body isn’t with them.  
Five stands over the rubble, wipes wet ash from his cheeks.  
He can’t figure out where he could be.  


+

  
When Ben dies, he’s dead.  
Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead. Dead and done.  
Isn’t he?  


+

  
When Ben dies, Vanya plays at his funeral. His favourite piece.  
She used to practice while he would read, during the few off moments they got.  
She felt ordinary around him, like she wasn’t special - but she didn’t mind in those moments. Being ordinary was better than having giant, murderous tentacles bust out of your chest - he had assured her.  
And being ordinary was better than being dead.  
As soon as she thinks that, she starts to cry. Hot, painful tears onto the strings of her violin as she plays Ben into the ground.  
Better to be ordinary than dead. the air is cold, the tears are warm on her face. She misses a note; Reginald Hargreeves looks at her in disdain.  
Her tears fall faster.


End file.
